Parry Mitchell, a Jewish member of Britain’s House of Lords, said he will resign if Jeremy Corbyn is re-elected as Labour Party leader.

Writing Tuesday in The Times of London, Mitchell said a report which found that anti-Semitism is not endemic in Britain’s Labour Party was an “insipid whitewash” and vowed to leave the party if Corbyn retains his post in a September leadership contest.

“Anti-Semitism has no part in a progressive party. I have come to the painful conclusion that were Mr. Corbyn to be re-elected next month, I will have to resign my membership of the Labour Party,” Mitchell wrote, according to the website City AM.

The report, prepared by Labour member Shami Chakrabarti in the wake of several anti-Israel statements by Labour lawmakers, found that while there is “occasionally toxic atmosphere” against Jews in Labour, anti-Semitism is not prevalent in the party’s ranks. The report was harshly criticized by British Jews.

In an interview with Britain’s Jewish Chronicle, Mitchell said there had been a “hijack” of the party by the far left and expressed hope that British Jews would back his stance.

Tagged as:

Your Comments

The Forward welcomes reader comments in order to promote thoughtful discussion on issues of importance to the Jewish community. All readers can browse the comments, and all Forward subscribers can add to the conversation. In the interest of maintaining a civil forum, The Forward requires that all commenters be appropriately respectful toward our writers, other commenters and the subjects of the articles. Vigorous debate and reasoned critique are welcome; name-calling and personal invective are not and will be deleted. Egregious commenters or repeat offenders will be banned from commenting. While we generally do not seek to edit or actively moderate comments, our spam filter prevents most links and certain key words from being posted and the Forward reserves the right to remove comments for any reason.